Pics: Justin D’Silva

Udupi, Aug 10: Members of district Construction Workers Federation of India (CWFI) and Centre of Indian Trade Union (CITU) jointly staged protest in front of DC Manipal here on Friday, August 9 demanding sand to be made available at lower price.

District president of CITU Udupi Vishwanath Rai said, “Crores of construction workers are facing many problems due to demonetisation policy. GST was enforced by the central government. Now Social Protection Bill 2018 passed by the central government is taking away the facilities provided to construction workers. They received facilities after long years of battle with the government. It is a conspiracy played by the government before election to turn the attention of workers.

“The central government should protect Construction Workers Act 1996, Construction Workers’ Board and workers’ life. The main purpose of this protest is to withdraw the amendment of the new bill and strengthening of construction workers.

“District authority said that sand mining will start from first week of August and everything will be alright. But nothing has happened as said. Thus, the district administration should take up necessary measures in this regard. As many as 23 workers’ associations have submitted memorandums to DC. But there was no development was seen after that. Let the district authority address the problem and make available sand and stone at reasonable price. If not, all associations will hold huge protest in the coming days,” he said.

Balakrishna Shetty, secretary, district CITU, H Narasimha, vice president, State Provident Fund Pensioners Association, Das Bhandary, Suresh Kallagar, Kaviraj, Shekhar Bangera, Dinesh Nayak and others were present.